Big Fun on the Big Island of Hawaii

Dewitt and I just had an amazing day with fun folks from Penn Mutual at the Fairmont Orchid Mauna Lani on the Kohala Coast of Hawaii Island. We explored photography, mostly with the iphone all around the grounds of this lovely resort. Yes, more of us fell down the rabbit hole of iphoneography - so much creative art work happened in such a short period of time that I promised to reprise the apps we used (and mention a few that we didn't so here they are!)

Snapseed                This is what I call the baby photoshop - the best photo optimizer by far. It also has some intriguing special effects like grunge, drama, and frames. It's robust so to get the most out of it, tap the question mark in the upper right to get help and links to instructional videos online. I always say, if you can only have one app, this is the one! And it's free!!!! The above photo of palm tree and gazebo roof was optimized in Snapseed and then zapped with the Drama filter in this same app.

FXPhoto Studio        Myriad special FX including frames. This app is easy, intuitive, and fun. There are so many effects that you could play forever with your existing photos and never finish. This great app is FREE today!

Pro HDR                    HDR stands for HIgh Dynamic Range and this app is a necessity for any iphoneographer. Anytime you have bright highlights and dark shadows (eg anytime you are shooting outdoors on a sunny day) you can get a photo that exposes for both areas, giving you a perfect photo that looks like what you see.  Set it on auto, hold it still while it analyzes and shoots 2 photos and then it will combine them into one. Save the result to your camera roll. Then app it with some other apps or just sit back and wait for compliments. The gazebo at sunrise below would have been a silhouette against the rising sun without ProHDR.

TouchRetouch           Want to get rid of power lines, annoying poles or trash in your photo? This is the go to app for content aware healing and removal of unwanted objects. Open your photo, use the little paint brush icon to select the part you want removed, and hit the go button (shaped like a little right arrow). Then just like magic, it's all fixed.

Autopainter              Cool painting app that is absolutely intuitive. Just use a photo from your camera roll, pick from a number of styles, and voila - amazing photo art. Works so well with plants and architecture. Two variations below with the laua`e fern and the palm tree (lithograph style).

Portrait Painter            This app is not just for portraits - in fact I never use it for people pix. It is fabulous for landscape and plants, birds. Like autopainter, it's an easy, one step app. Still you can also fine tune and adjust the effects. Great artistic app.


Blender                    Great app for combining images - very intuitive interface. Just import one and then another photo from your camera roll and it will put them together. It's like a double exposure or collage effect. After you choose two photos, you can also choose from a number of blend modes - go up to the two overlapping squares at the  top and it will bring them up. Try combining unlike images for a surreal effect. Terrific creative fun. The photo below was created with blender combining two shots of palm leaves and blend mode exclusion.

Other apps you might want to experiment with:

Simply BW                Absolute best B and W app - like a teeny Ansel Adams living in your phone.

Pic Grunger              Vintage and grunge effects - great if you are into that sort of thing - we are!

Autostitch                Panoramic - best. Can shoot panos from within the app or shoot with camera and combine later. It can handle lots of shots and big files.


Perfectly Clear        Best 1 stop shop to fix pix with no muss, no fuss, superior noise removal

This will keep a photographer busy for years. And likely whet your app-etite for more.

Red Jalopies iPhone Style

In Bridgeport, California, Dewitt and I were treated to 100 year old automobiles crowding into town for an annual gathering. Followed them all over town with our iPhones at the ready. As my iPhoneography pals say, "If it's red, shoot it."

I used Hipstamatic: Dreamcanvas and Tejas to capture some of the details of the story. BTW, Hipstamatch is a must have app if you want to have an idea which of your kabillions of lens/film combinations will give you the desired result.

 To illustrate this collision of worlds, I used Painteresque and then blended the result back with the original in IRIS. Retouch removed a distracting chimney spout. I think they were buying oil, all these jalopies are in beautifully restored condition and they all leak oil. The owners carry big pieces of cardboard to put under them when they are parked.

 Autopainter app, IRIS to combine, Snapseed app. The town looks as vintage as the cars.

iPhone Art Gallery

An exultation of photos are featured in this gallery by some of iPhone Diva's favorite contributors. These iphoneographs blew my socks off! OK, I wasn't wearing socks, but if I had been, they'd be history.

Jack Davis sent this lovely photo of "just a feather found on my lawn". The apps are a mystery, but knowing Jack, he probably used every app in the app store and a few he made up himself.

Bob Wright puts his own special spin on this photo using Pixel Blend app after the last iPhone Diva post. Way to go, Bob!

Judy Norton has this to say about her vintage garden shot: "Photoforge just updated to Photoforge2 and I love it! It has many of the elements of the original, plus a simulated Hipstamatic right inside the app with many film, lens, flash changes. I think I can entertain myself for days just with this app! This was originally a color pic from a garden in a community near here. I made many versions, but I like this one." I do too.

Robin Robertis immortalizes the spirit of our late friend, photographer and trickster, Jack Palmer, in this art photo. She apped it with Autopainter and Pixel Blend. We miss you, Jack.

Autopainter Turns iPhone Photos Into Paintings

“What are you doing?” Dewitt asked as I sat staring intently at my iPhone. “Painting,” I answer.

Autopainter and Autopainter II are two “crazy good” apps for creating photo art paintings. You choose an image and a style of painting such as chalk or felt tip, click start, sit back and watch it work.

I admit that I feel a little like a dog watching a ceiling fan, but it captivates me as it underpaints, brushes, and details. And that’s not so different from those minutes in the darkroom spent waiting for the image to magically appear in the chemical bath.



It’s a little disconcerting at first to see how great an image it fashions from my photos with little to no effort on my part. Still, the best images require more tweaking and blending with the original. Thankfully, I still have some artistic work to do.



And even with all the advances in apps and equipment, there are still two things I have to do as a photographer; the two most important things: choose what is in the frame and when to click the shutter (tap the screen). Composition and decisive moment.

All the apps in the world won’t save a photo if composition is faulty or the moment is missed. Just sayin’.....

The images in this post were blended with the original in either IRIS app or DXP app. In this photo of the bird's nest, I created a mask and painted the egg back in from the original. Try it for yourself - send me your favorites.